Greece The city
at a time of crisis: Mapping racist attacks in Athens22.07.2013Since the onset of the financial
crisis and subsequent economic policies introduced by the EU,
the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund
in Greece, racism and incidents of racist violence in the country
have risen sharply. During 2012, the Racist Violence Recording
Network (RVRN) recorded 154 incidents of racist violence. In
91 cases, victims said they believed that the perpetrators belonged
to an extremist group. In "at least 8 cases, the victims
or witnesses to the attacks reported that they recognised persons
associated to Golden Dawn among the perpetrators." The RVRN
also reported that "there is a distinct category of 25 incidents
where police and racist violence are interlinked," with
some attacks taking place in detention centres and police stations,
while in others "the involvement of law enforcement officials
in racist attacks was also reported." [1]

Increased racism and the
growth of neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn have led to numerous different
responses from social, political and community organisations.
These include fairly typical activities such as marches and demonstrations
as well as more novel responses such as anti-fascist motorcycle
patrols in neighbourhoods "where thugs are known to beat
up immigrants and cause damage to their shops." [2] Recently
the team behind the research project The
City at a Time of Crisis, which aims to "trace
and research the effects of the ongoing financial crisis on urban
public spaces in Athens," launched a map
to document racist attacks in the city. Statewatch spoke
to Jaya Klara Brekke from the group to find out more.

When did you start
the mapping project? Has its use grown as time has gone by?
It started fairly recently. We launched it publicly in May. So
far it has grown in terms of the attention it has received, which
has been quite a lot, but our main focus really is to make it
active as a tool, and to form a network of people around it.
This obviously takes time: for people to know about it, to feel
comfortable in using it, and for people to see a sense in using
it. The last point especially is also dependent on the map being
integrated into other initiatives. In other words, that it is
linked more to other initiatives, support groups, legal help,
resources etc. so that it has an immediate practical relevance
as well. In any case, these are all things we are working on
and we are expecting that it will take some time.

Has the map proved
to be a useful tool for anti-racist activity and organisation
in Athens? How has it been used, and do you think there are things
that could be done with the information which aren't being done
at the minute?
So far it serves a limited purpose in being an immediate visual
reference point to what is happening. As time passes and as more
information is added it will also become a useful open record
and reference for past incidents. Ideally, it would be nice to
see more follow-up information on each case, but as there are
so many incidents this is not always easy and takes a good network
of users which hasn't been established yet. The other issue is
language. English seemed to be the most accessible language internationally,
but ideally the map would be in Greek and French as well.

The government has
recently announced the creation of a police unit focused on racist
attacks, and an anti-racism law is the subject of debate amongst
politicians. How do you assess the government's response to the
increase in racist and anti-immigrant activity in Athens and
in Greece? Could they do more to help address the problem?
As a starting point I think it is important to keep in mind that
this government is the same that ordered the Xenios Zeus operation,
so to expect them to do much to stop racist violence that they
are in a sense inciting through their own acts would seem naive,
even contradictory. In any case, the recent "anti-racist
initiatives" from the government and police have come after
international pressure from the Racist Violence Recording Network,
UNHCR reports and Amnesty. Most of these initiatives are clearly
more for show than anything. As far as I have heard, the new
police unit receives next to no training and its creation does
not change the fact that some 50% of police vote for Golden Dawn.
The "emergency phone line" for racist violence is a
farce - we recently published a translated
conversation from the phone line between a police officer
and a migrant who was badly beaten. [Note: the original transcript
in Greek by Dimitris Angelidis can be found here]

The anti-racism law has
not been implemented and is the subject of debate and is resisted
by the ruling party, Nea Demokratia (New Democracy). So all-in-all
these initiatives are pretty farcical. In terms of whether they
could do more to address the problem, well, yes, I think racist
violence has a lot to do with the terms on which public discourse
takes place, also around issues like the crisis, and the European
border system. Also, the problem is not only an isolated issue
to do with Greek mentality and policy. Obviously the history
of the Greek police and the right/fascism in Greece is pretty
specific, but the situation is obviously also connected with
European immigration policy, international economic policy and
wars. The EU needs to be included, given the responsibility of
EU policy with regard to the rise of fascism in Greece.

When it comes to what
"we" can do, a lot of work needs to be done on fundamentally
changing the terms on which this debate takes place, which is
always a nationalist one, and change the way material experiences
are interpreted and discussed.

How has Operation Xenios
Zeus affected the social and political situation in Athens?
As Harry Ladis, a lawyer that we interviewed as part of the Landscapes
of Emergency mini-documentary has said about the HIV
scandal - where a national emergency was created around the issue
of foreign prostitutes bringing HIV to Greece (a claim with hardly
any evidence and which resulted in arrests, forced HIV tests,
and the publicising of these women's identities) - in this political
and economic climate of total powerlessness and bankruptcy it
becomes important to create problems that the state and police
can then go in and "solve". Xenios Zeus is one such
operation, where people, many of whom had legal rights to stay
in the country, were rounded up as a show of force and a show
of initiative and capacity on the side of the state. The result
of this is increasingly hysterical anti-migrant pogroms, abuse,
exploitation and murder.

Are you aware of mapping
projects elsewhere in Greece or Europe? Do you think the use
of maps could be useful for social and political organising on
other issues outside of anti-racism?
Maps are very useful, but obviously they are only useful if they
actually contain real and updated information and this takes
a lot of time and work. There are a lot of good examples out
there. One map that I saw recently and that is using the same
tool as we are (Ushahidi) is the Harass
Map that people in Egypt have been working on, mapping
sexual harassment. It has been going since 2010 so has had some
years to develop and grow as a tool. So yes, maps can be a very
good tool for organising - as a way to gather information and
make it available in a way that can be understood, grasped and
acted on very quickly.

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